ABSTRACT
In the prefatory sonnets to Frangoise Pascal’s Le Commerce du Parnasse [Letters from Parnassus], a number of the author’s contemporaries praise her talents in the most effusive terms. One admirer, identified only by the initials M.D.G., declares, “There is no eloquence that Pascal’s does not surpass.” He extols her artistic versatility: “Dear daughter of the god who presides over Parnassus, / Whose rare wit shines so beautifully in her works, / Which shall we praise, your verses or your paintings?” Another sonnet, signed La RivO iere,1 indicates that the works of “the illustrious Pascal” were once widely apO preciated: “The finest minds of this great universe/ Proclaim that your hand has no equal.”2
